All’s Fair In Politics?

Is the GOP on the run? Don’t tell that to J.R. Romano.

As state Republican chairman, Romano is presidential candidate Donald Trump’s most visible and enthusiastic supporter in Connecticut. And he makes no apologies for it.

As Republican chairman in a blue state, he takes a lot of hits — for retweeting an Internet hoax photo that he claimed showed President Obama ​“drooling over” Che Guevara, for instance — and he makes no apologies for that, either. He gives as good as he gets.

Romano, who grew up in Derby and now lives in Branford, did that on an episode of WNHH radio’s ​“Dateline New Haven,” when he appeared alongside one of his favorite targets, Democratic State Rep. Roland Lemar of New Haven. Both are active in statewide campaigns that will determine the balance of power in the legislature. The two offered starkly different views about over school choice, housing patterns, the Donald, and that Che photo. Without resorting to name-calling.

Edited excerpts of that conversation follow. You can hear the full episode by clicking on the audio file at the bottom of the story.

Unconventional Wisdom

WNHH: The conventional wisdom is that the Republican Party went nuts nationally. That the Grand Old Connecticut Republican Party — moderates like [former U.S. Rep.] Stewart McKinney and [former U.S. Sen. and Gov.] Lowell Weicker — they had no home any more in a party that just wanted to hate immigrants, hate black people …

Romano: But that’s what the Democrats say. That’s not what we say. It never happened, and I‘m going to give you a prime example of why it never happened.

WNHH: There are like three Republicans registered left in the state. You have no Congressmen or senators.

Romano: That’s incorrect actually. This year we, for the first time in years, have actually registered more Republicans than Democrats. So to your point — the narrative that you push that somehow we’re racist because of policy. Not because of anything we do; it is simply coming from the Democrats. Because many in the media subscribe to the liberal ideology of that and they agree that the policy is racist and then call us racist.

WNHH: There is a whole history of where the Republicans have gone for the racist white vote since Ronald Reagan started his [1980 presidential] campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where the civil rights workers were murdered; since the Ku Klux Klan endorsed him and he accepted it; up to the Trump campaign where now white supremacist organizations are for him.

Romano: But you have Hillary Clinton who said [former Democratic U.S. Sen.] Robert Byrd was her hero …

WNHH: … who was a member of the Klan …

The people leaving the Republican Party [in Connecticut] didn’t just do it because of race. In fact we have all these white suburbs because people didn’t want to live with black people. They used to register Republican but now they register Democrat or more so independent. You don’t think it has to do with fiscal policy? You don’t think it has to do with the national party?

Romano: I think it has everything to do with fiscal policy. And your argument over white flight has to do with the failures of big cities, not race. When you go to the suburbs, you’re going to get a better education. You’re going to a better system. Arguing that it’s just a race issue is wrong, and it’s not a proper interpretation of what’s truly going on. I grew up in Derby. That is not a community that is wealthy.

WNHH: It’s not all white, either.

Romano: Correct.

WNHH: No, I’m talking about the single-acre zoning, about towns like East Haven and North Haven where crosses were burned if [black] people tried to move in. Where the U.S. Justice Department had to come to East Haven — after Republicans were no longer in the White House — to stop them from beating up and racially profiling and destroying the rights of everyone of color in that town.

Romano: You’re talking about the police department …

WNHH: They responded to the voters of that town, who went to East Haven to get away from black people in New Haven …

Romano:That is a wildly simple explanation for something that has to do with so many other factors. What is the tax rate in New Haven, by the way? I looked to buy a condo in New Haven. And what I realized was that my tax rate would be higher than my mortgage. Do you think I’m going to buy here?

WNHH: That’s because the state legislature, dominated by the suburbs, has taken half our property off the tax rolls. You bought in Branford. If we want to do the same thing you do in Branford, we have to charge twice as much in taxes from every homeowner.

Romano: So it’s not because of the size of the New Haven government? It’s not because of the mismanagement and the layers …

WNHH: Compared to corruption and mismanagement in Branford or East Haven? The U.S. Justice Department — it wasn’t just the police department. They send people to jail for taking bribes.

Romano: And that doesn’t happen in cities?

WNHH: It does happen in cities.

Romano: OK.

WNHH: If we own the same car or the same house in New Haven, we have to pay twice the amount in taxes [compared to] the suburbs because we don’t get fully reimbursed [for tax-exempt property that you use …]

White Flight & Education

Romano: Listen, you’re trying to argue that people left New Haven because of racism …

WNHH: There is no argument that there was white flight in the ​‘60s. It was not about the size of the government.

Romano: You’re simplifying this for your own narrative. You can’t sit there and say my family left New Haven and went to Derby because of racism. It could be because they want a better education system. There’s a multitude of reasons.

You’re focusing on is the past. You don’t want to talk about what’s going on currently.

Let’s talk about education. Let’s talk about how this is a state that doesn’t have school choice. And we put a single black woman in jail for trying to get a better education for her child, and Democrats didn’t say a word.

WNHH: Why don’t you say a word, Roland Lemar? You’re a Democrat.

Lemar: We did, actually. We had a pretty large fight inside of the [state] legislature about how to handle this certain situation.

Romano: She’s still sitting in jail.

WNHH: What is the situation?

Lemar: There was a woman, I believe it was in Norwalk …

Romano: She lived in Bridgeport and sent her child to a Norwalk school because it was a better school district.

Lemar: The town of Norwalk prosecuted this individual for false registration. She believed her child would get a better education in Norwalk.

Romano: [She should have] school choice.

WNHH: School choice means you should be able to send your kid wherever you want no matter where you live. What’s wrong with [school choice], Roland?

Lemar: Generally with how we’ve moved with magnet schools inside of the city of New Haven is to provide opportunities for children anywhere they are.

Romano: But it’s disturbing that you have a lottery system where we are asking a child to make a determination on her future or his future who can’t get into one of those magnet schools.

Lemar: I don’t know where he’s trying to go with this …

WNHH: I think where he’s going with this is: Democrats love to blast Republicans about race for easy hits, because they come from cities. But in fact when it comes to black parents being empowered in a way that challenges their ideology, they won’t let them send their kids to school in another town to get a better education.

Lemar: I don’t think that’s true. We have worked on open choice policies throughout most of the suburbs.

WNHH: The irony of that was: After Sheff v. O’Neill, the school desegregation case of the ​‘90s, we had two main approaches: One was for more magnet schools. And a lot of people are reimagining whether that even works. Also they’d have this reverse choice, where people can send across borders. But what we found in New Haven was that many people from the suburbs were sending their children to New Haven schools …

Romano: Correct. Those premier charter schools.

WNHH: Not charter schools. Not charter schools [or magnets]. I’m talking about schools like Wilbur Cross [High School]…

Romano: I have had suburban friends who have gone to those schools. My point is when we want to talk about policy impacting people’s lives, here’s an issue — when we talk about the quality of education and the inequality of what’s going on — when you consider that Bridgeport and Hartford get billions in money for an education system that isn’t working … you can’t say … we shouldn’t empower parents. The parents that should be empowered the most are the minority parents.

WNHH: Roland, why don’t you want to empower minority parents so you can fix the schools to get them a better education?

Lemar: There are a series of misstatements. Bridgeport, Hartford, and New Haven don’t receive billions a year in education funding. The three communities themselves receive far less than a billion dollars in education on an annual basis — largely intended to deal with the consequences of racist policies that do exist throughout the state and the surrounding suburbs. If you tried to build affordable housing in a wide variety of communities outside of New Haven, Hartford, and Bridgeport, what you’re met with at the board of zoning appeals is a whole bunch of NIMBYism. ​“Please don’t do this in our backyard.”

Romano: The solution is school choice.

Who Can Live Where

WNHH: The argument there, J.R., is that housing patterns underlie the problems with schools.

Romano: I agree with you. How about we completely reform how we do affordable housing and public housing? Why is it that the government writes the check directly to the landlord? Why don’t we empower people with public assistance and give them the check directly?

Give a single mom who’s getting a [monthly] $1,200 subsidy for rent, has a stake in making sure the apartment is fixed … 

WNHH: Roland I think he’s saying give people a voucher …

Romano: She can go to Branford, and no one will know they’re on public assistance.

WNHH: … to demand that the landlord give better results. What’s the counter-argument to that?

Lemar:That sounds like a decent pilot program that we’re already doing. Lots of folks are already receiving vouchers to move to Branford of North Carolina. We end up ensuring that apartments meet standards.

WNHH: But if we keep cutting taxes, the way Republicans are pushing to do, we don’t have the regulatory back-up. We saw with Democratic and Republican administrations alike at the federal level, they never watch the contractors who are getting the money. So Church Street South got $3 million a year in [Section 8 rental subsidies] to a private landlord, and the place just fell apart. There was a public health emergency.

If you don’t have regulatory agencies that follow up to make sure that people are spending money right, isn’t there ultimately just going to be predatory capitalism?

Romano: If I’m a single mom. And I get a $1,200 subsidy, and I choose to rent a $900 apartment and save a little money so I can go back to school, I’m OK with that.

WNHH: But what if the only people you can rent [from] — because there are no regulators around, because you guys demonize people like [U.S. Sen.] Elizabeth Warren — are a bunch of slumlords who are going to take advantage of her, and she’s going to be living in crap because no one’s inspecting them?

Romano: She’s empowered. She’s going to have the money in her checking account. She doesn’t have to live there. That’s absurd.

WNHH: Do you think the free market will have enough good landlords, poverty landlords, who will rent to her? Because that’s not what we see …

Romano: But the reality of what we’re talking about is public housing. This is an entity that is entirely controlled by government. The tenant never sees the check.

WNHH: I get that J.R. But if they get the check, there’s no back-up to make sure they’ll get the option to rent a safe, decent place to live unless you guys will allow taxes to be raised to be able to afford to have regulation.

Romano: There’s a massive misunderstanding of the free market. If the landlord doesn’t know that you are in fact collecting a public subsidy, if I have a public subsidy, I’m not going to choose to live in a bad apartment. I’m not going to choose to live in a bad neighborhood.

WNHH: What if I don’t have a choice, because there aren’t enough affordable places and enough decent places to live, which there aren’t now? You think the free market will solve it? The shortage in New Haven — it’s not all for bad reasons — if you have a job, if make $15 an hour, and you have a kid godforbid, you can’t afford to rent an apartment that’s not a piece of junk.

Romano: What you’re saying in New Haven — it depends where in New Haven — you’re saying this person only has the opportunity to live in New Haven. Let them live in Ansonia.

When we have a government program, we’re never focused on the outcome. If someone is on a subsidy are these programs empowering people?

You’re not looking at it from the prospect of what could be.

Lemar: This is a theoretical argument based on extraordinary privilege …

Romano: Excuse me. Did you say I’m privileged?

Lemar: Without the on-the-ground understanding of what the reality is. There are not nearly enough apartments in Branford of Milford for people to move to. If we gave everyone a voucher they’d still be in New Haven, because this is the only place that builds affordable housing, that has zoning that allows them to build it, that doesn’t have citizens that block every attempt to build affordable housing, to build multi-familly housing.

WNHH: But Roland, the Republicans won the argument over the last 20 years. Democrats came to agree that government was not enough results-oriented. Poor people just got poorer. Have the Democrats even been honest about that?

Lemar: People talk about empowerment as though it is block grants or money given to people so they can make their own decisions. But we know in this system who is taken advantage of most frequently. It’s not just in New Haven or in Branford. African-Americans and Latinos are underbanked. They’re more likely to be victims of crime, to be discriminated against … by landlords. …

Romano: I’m waiting for a solution here. What you’re basically saying is, ​“We can’t give them money because …”

Lemar: I’ll tell you the solution. The solution is to force communities to live up to their responsibilities. To provide affordable multi-family housing in all of our surrounding towns. To give people the choice to move into those communities if it fits their individual needs. If they want to move to Branford … Branford had no problem, no problem, rezoning large sections of their town to allow commercial development. They just didn’t want to rezone large sections of their towns to allow residents to live there.

Romano: So Branford doesn’t have condos …

Lemar: Branford has plenty of condos. And none of them are affordable. Almost none of them are open to the individuals we’re talking about.

Trump

WNHH: J.R., at the beginning of the show you were saying Republicans were being given a bad rep of being associated with racism.

Romano: Correct.

WNHH: Your presidential candidate is Donald Trump, who wants to build a wall against Mexico. He doesn’t think Latino judges can treat him fairly. His father was a KKK member. They were known for keeping blacks out of buildings. Do you feel like you have any responsibility in supporting Donald Trump?

Romano:This is twofold. If we start holding people accountable for their fathers, that’s going to get pretty dicey. As far as the wall, we all lock our doors at night. Donald Trump never said he doesn’t want immigration.

WNHH: So you don’t think Donald Trump has any racism?

Romano: No.

WNHH: You don’t think saying that judge can’t be fair because he’s Mexican — even though he wasn’t Mexican — was racist?

Romano:Well, you know, here’s the thing. It’s like a reporter with me. When I have this perception that someone’s going to be biased against me, that sort of thing is going to come out. And I think that judge had some ties to pro-immigration organizations.

WNHH: Why does David Duke, the KKK leader, support Donald Trump?

Romano: Because he’s trying to cash in on media attention.

WNHH: Why can’t he cash in on media attention by supporting someone else?

Romano: Because, listen. There’s no question that Donald Trump has completely captivated the nation. There is a massive enthusiasm gap between what Donald Trump has done and Hillary Clinton has done.

When we’re talking about a wall, what the reality of the situation is, we all lock our doors at night. We want to control who’s coming in. And by the way, Mexico has a wall. It’s a simple thing.

WNHH:Is this a simple thing, Roland?

Lemar: It wasn’t a response to a reporter’s question when Donald Trump called Mexicans rapists.

Romano: He didn’t say that.

WNHH: He said we’re letting them in, and they’re rapists.

Romano: 80 percent of the women who have come across the border have said that they’ve been raped by the coyotes.

Lemar: A lot of those coyotes are Americans …

That Che Photo

WNHH: [You tried to attack] President Obama by tying him to Che Guevara.

Romano: Sure!

WNHH: You retweeted a photo of him holding up a shirt with Guevara’s photo.

Romano:Sent out an email, too.

WNHH:It turned out that [photo] was an Internet hoax.

Romano: Oh I knew it was [photoshopped].

WNHH: If you knew it was a hoax, why did you send it around like it was real? is that fair?

What if someone photoshopped a J.R. Romano picture and put a Ku Klux Klan KKK T‑shirt on you? And Roland Lemar sent out an email saying that’s the real J.R.? Would that be fair?

Romano:There’s two things. I get called a racist all of the time and sexist by the Connecticut Democrat Party, and they know nothing about me. I grew up with seven women. I grew up with seven women, and in a diverse area. That happens on a regular basis.

I did this to bring some type of discussion of who Che Guevara was.

WNHH:Wait. Che Guevara has been dead for 50 years.

Romano: And he’s a hero to the left.

WNHH: That’s B.S.!

Romano: You’re telling me at Bernie Sanders [rallies] some people aren’t wearing Che Guevara shirts?

WNHH: What does that have to do with [a photoshopped photo]?

Romano: Barack Obama stood before a Che Guevara monument to make sure it was in the picture.

WNHH: Where was that?

Romano: In Cuba.

WNHH: Wait a second. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger from your Republican Party went to China and [took Mao photos] …

J.R., are you the only person who never makes a mistake?

Romano: No.

WNHH: Just say you screwed up! There are plenty of things you can criticize Obama for. Why are you criticizing him for not wearing a T‑shirt of someone who’s been dead for 50 years?

Romano: Because what has to happen, there has to be an understanding of who Che was.

WNHH: You really think that’s an honest way to have an honest conversation of who Che Guevara was? You took a photoshopped picture that you did not say was photoshopped to use as evidence that Obama was somehow honoring someone he was not honoring.

Romano: I was trying to bring up a broader discussion.

Look, we’re in an era when sometimes you have to do things to get attention, right?

WNHH:That photo was a lie.

Romano:Listen, you’re holding me to a different standard. Every day the Democratic Party calls me a racist, or a sexist, or a bigot. Is that a lie? You’re holding me to a standard that you’re not holding anyone else to.

Click on or download the above audio file to listen to the full episode of ​“Dateline New Haven” with J.R. Romano and Roland Lemar, which included discussion of how to fix Connecticut’s economic problems; why Romano did not call on a GOP State Central Committee member to take down a Confederate flag after the Charleston massacre; and whether each party’s favored think tanks ​“cherry pick” their facts.